Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (17 page)

Chapter Twelve

Lucien and Damien met up with Basil
and Kane at the dock where they’d just tied up the boat they’d
‘borrowed’ next to the boat Lucien and Damien had been following
for hours.

Dropping their bundles, Lucien and
Damien shifted.

Lucien surveyed the area while he and
Damien dressed.

Kane and Basil were silent for several
moments, but the silence reverberated with rage.

“
She’s hurt,” Basil said
when Lucien had finished dressing.

Lucien whipped a look at him. “How
badly?”

Kane shook his head. “Couldn’t tell
from the distance, but they’ve been using her as a punching bag,”
he ground out. “We got here in time to see them tie up the boat.
She didn’t look like she was conscious and, from what the fat guy
said, he’d hit her pretty hard. He was just about to hit her again
when the older guy pistol whipped him and carried her off over his
shoulder.”

Lucien didn’t say anything for several
moments. “Well, they were already dead men,” he ground out after a
few moments. “Let’s see if we can keep cool heads until we’ve
thoroughly reconnoitered the area. You two circle around in that
direction. Damien and I will go this way.”

They split again, moving as stealthily
as possible given the fact that they didn’t have the cloak of
darkness to aid them. Lucien was severely put out that they didn’t.
It would have been a hell of an advantage for them since their
night vision was superior. It would’ve been like daylight to them
but would’ve severely handicapped the other men. But since it
wouldn’t be dusk for several hours and he wasn’t in the mood to
wait, they had to work with what they had.

By the time they’d worked their way
around to the building his nose was telling him held Laurie, they’d
spied four lookouts on or near the buildings surrounding the one
the kidnappers were using to hold Laurie. Basil reported six on
their side when they arrived. It worried Lucien. It seemed more
logical that if they had put six on one side they would’ve put six
on the other and if he was right there were two that he had no idea
of their positions.

It was particularly worrying to him
because he didn’t plan on leaving any standing and they might have
the chance to run—and get away—since he didn’t know where they
were.

“
Shit!” he hissed under
his breath. “My head count was four. Basil—circle through our side
and make another head count. We must have missed a couple. Then
meet us back here. I’m going to try to get close enough to see
what’s going on so I can figure out the best attack
strategy.”

When Basil had left, Lucien surveyed
the building, all that he could see of it. There wasn’t a sign of a
window in any of the rusting metal sides except high on the walls,
much too far up to get a look through any of them. They’d have to
be geckos to get to them, he thought in disgust, and there was no
sign of a fire escape—or a hole in the wall for all that the place
looked like it was about ready to fall-in from rust deterioration.
He sent Kane and Damien around one side while he followed the
other, checking for a way in and/or a window they could get to to
see and hear what was going on. They met up on the other
side.

“
Anything?” Lucien asked,
not very hopeful since he hadn’t found anything.

Damien shook his head in disgust.
“They aren’t stupid. Unfortunately. Whoever’s running the show
knows what he’s doing.”

“
There’s a building back
there that’s lower. We might be able to get to the roof of it and
jump across,” Kane suggested.

Lucien looked at Damien. He shook his
head. “We’d have to shift to beast to make it and even then it
would be iffy. It’s a good twenty to thirty feet. Plus the metal.
Time we hit it they’d know we were here.”

“
A lot of the windows are
broken, though,” Kane persisted. “We’d be able to see and hear what
was going on without a problem.”

They retreated a short distance to
consider the situation. Basil joined them once more, reporting that
he’d only seen four men himself.

So they still didn’t know if there
were four on one side and six on the other or a dozen shooters
scattered around the area. Lucien shook it off and focused on the
more important issue of the moment—Laurie.

“
I say we blitz the
bastards and grab Laurie,” Damien growled.

“
Which goes to show you
aren’t thinking straight,” Lucien responded tightly. “We don’t know
where she is or what the situation is. If there’s anybody close
enough to blow her head off they could do it before we could stop
it! We have to know her exact position and how close the closest
guard is to her before we can even formulate a plan.”

“
What about a diversion
that would bring them out?” Basil asked.

Lucien considered it but shook his
head again. “Same problem. They might decide to get rid of her.
They might decide to use her as a shield or a hostage.”

“
Well I don’t see how the
fuck we’re going to manage that!” Kane said angrily. “We can’t
fly!”

Lucien sent him a sharp look. “The
angels can,” he said slowly.

“
But are any of them close
enough to do us any good?”

“
We’ll find out,” Lucien
responded to Damien’s comment, slipping his radio from his pants
pocket and switching it on. “Raphael, come back.”

Static greeted the hail. Lucien waited
a few minutes and tried again. “Raphael, come back. This is hell
hound one.”

“
Dark angel one here, hell
hound. What ya need,
mon ami?”

“
Got a situation. Need
eyes in the sky. What’s your twenty?”

“
Same as it was last time
we talked. Hill country. What’s the location you need
surveyed?”

Lucien gave him the specifics. “How
long would it take you to make the flight?”

There was silence for a few minutes.
“Thirty to forty five. That could work out well on the spotting. It
should be dusk by then.”

“
Shit!” Basil snarled
angrily.

Lucien glared at him.

“
I’ll head down anyway,
just in case. I might have somebody closer,” Raphael offered. “I
could make a call.”

“
You do that,” Lucien
said, “And thanks. We’re going to see if we can see what we need to
see. If we can’t arrange it, we’ll wait on backup.”

It was a hard decision, but then again
every decision he’d had to make since Laurie had been taken was a
hard one.

“
We’re going to fall back
and wait,” he finally said decisively.

“
And if they kill her
while we’re waiting?” Damien demanded angrily.

“
I don’t fucking like it
any better than you do, little brother,” Lucien growled. “But in
case it hasn’t occurred to you, they’ve had plenty time and
opportunity to kill her before now. They took her for some reason
and that means they want her alive. And that means we have time to
make the right decisions! I don’t know about you, but I’m going to
have a hard time sleeping if we get her killed because I made the
wrong call.”

They retreated to the boat Basil and
Kane had ‘borrowed’, untied it, and moved it down river about a
half a mile, far enough they thought it wasn’t as likely to be
spotted as it had been. Lucien realized it had probably been a
mistake to dock beside the kidnappers’ boat to start with, but he
didn’t think any of them were really thinking very clearly or that
it was the right time to chew Basil and Kane’s asses about it. He
was doing his utmost, but unlike most of the situations they found
themselves in, he was emotionally involved. They all were and that
made it a hell of a lot harder to focus on their
training.

He was afraid they were going to make
worse mistakes and get Laurie killed if they couldn’t detach
themselves enough to use their training.

Raphael arrived before they could
totally lose their cool and do anything stupid, landing near the
tree at the edge of the industrial park where they’d taken
cover.

“
Thanks for coming,”
Lucien said cordially and proceeded to outline the situation and
describe the location of the warehouse where Laurie was being
held.

Maurice and Raoul, two other members
of the dark angels, Raphael’s squad members, arrived while they
were discussing the situation. That left them only one shy of two
full squads and Lucien was already feeling better about their odds
of getting Laurie back safely.

At Raphael’s suggestion, his men
decided to fly reconnaissance of the area while he focused on
trying to gather Intel on the target building. As soon as the light
had dimmed enough they were reasonably confident they wouldn’t be
spotted, the angels took flight.

Lucien and his men began making their
way back to the target on foot so they could get into position to
move fast once they knew exactly where Laurie was.

* * * *

Laurie didn’t know what made her look
up. She hadn’t heard anything. At least she wasn’t aware of having
heard anything. Maybe it was simply her sixth sense that set off
alarms that she was being watched?

She didn’t know what she’d expected,
but spotting an angel perched on the ledge of the ventilation
window wasn’t it! Her heart threatened to leap out of her
chest.

He met her gaze and lifted
a finger to his lips in a silencing motion. Then his lips
moved.
Get ready. Help coming.

Laurie looked away as quickly as she
could tear her gaze from him, fearful that she might have attracted
attention to him. The man who’d carried her into the building, she
saw, was heading back toward where he’d strapped her to a
chair.

“
You’re going to have to
make a video message for daddy,” he said irritably. “They’re
demanding proof of life.”

Laurie blinked at him. “What should I
say?” she asked shakily.

“
Tell him you’re ok but
you won’t be if he doesn’t deliver the plans.”

“
What plans?” Laurie asked
blankly.

“
Just say it.”

Taken aback by his vehemence, Laurie
nodded jerkily.

Setting the phone camera down, he tied
a scarf over the lower part of his face and walked toward her.
Placing the barrel of his pistol against her skull, he prodded
her.

Cold terror trickled down Laurie’s
spine when she felt the hard, cold barrel against her head. “I’m
fine, daddy. I’m not hurt. They want the plans, though. Please give
them the plans!”

“
Or I’ll blow her head
off,” the man beside her growled.

Thankfully, he moved away after only a
moment. Setting the gun down on the table where he’d set the phone
before, he picked up the phone, attached the video he’d just shot
to a message, and sent it.

Laurie had been wracking her brain to
figure out what was going on since she’d overheard the conversation
between him and someone else on the phone. Unfortunately, she
didn’t know much about her father. He’d basically abandoned them
after the divorce from her mother. She didn’t recall seeing him but
once afterward. Of course, she’d been so small when they divorced
she didn’t remember that at all, but she thought she must have been
around six the last time she’d seen him.

She knew he was a scientist and he
worked for the government. She’d never figured out what he did for
the government and she was pretty sure she’d never heard her mother
say anything that even hinted at what he did.

Maybe her mother hadn’t
known?

Or maybe she did and that was why
she’d never talked about it?

Truthfully, she’d never given that
particular aspect any thought at all. She certainly hadn’t figured
he did anything important enough to get her kidnapped!

And how the hell had they tracked her
down anyway? She’d changed her name to her mother’s maiden name
when her mother had died. It had been an act of defiance, an
attempt to get back at him.

Pretty stupid and juvenile actually
since she hadn’t seen or heard from him in years! She doubted he
knew she’d changed her name to spite him.

But she’d wanted to divorce him, too,
especially when he hadn’t shown up to comfort her mother toward the
end. It would have cost him so little! And she knew her mother had
never stopped loving him. She hadn’t turned to another man. She’d
barely even dated in all the years since.

Unfortunately, she’d been so angry
when her older brother and sister had supported him she hadn’t been
in touch with them in years either. So, even if they knew, she’d
missed the chance to find out what they knew.

That thought made her go
cold all over. Her sister hadn’t changed her name. Even after she
married, she’d kept her father’s name, merely joining it to her
husband’s with a hyphen. And her brother, naturally enough, carried
their father’s name. Worse, he was a junior so he had
exactly
the same
name!

She tried not to think why they would
have kidnapped her and not them, because she didn’t believe they
would’ve needed to go to all the effort of tracking her down if her
brother and sister and their children were available as
pawns.